Large retail chains have become the most powerful corporations in America and are rapidly transforming our economy, communities, and landscape. In this deft and revealing book, Stacy Mitchell illustrates how mega-retailers are fueling many of our most pressing problems, from the shrinking middle class to rising water pollution and diminished civic engagement.Mitchell's investigation takes us from the suburbs of Cleveland to a fruit farm in California, the stockroom of an Oregon Wal...

Two hearts, two souls. Devastated by loss, united through destiny.The rules: Communicate only through text messages and never reveal our real names or other personal details.My name is Ean Montgomery. After the drunk-driving accident that killed my wife, son, and unborn daughter, I was forced to see a grief counselor. In an unconventional move, she gave me a private cell phone and the first initial of the name of a woman who had been widowed by the same accident.I h...

The collection of lectures and publications from the Schumacher Center for a New Economics represents some of the foremost voices on a new economics.Independent businesses in the United States have been under attack in recent decades. Large chains, or "big-box" stores, have dominated the market for nearly every product, in the process homogenizing our once unique Main Streets. Now local communities across the country are fighting back, and Stacy Mitchell is helping to shape the too...

As an aspiring or seasoned writer, do you feel like you aren't making headway, stumbling on what to write next, or wondering if you're even on the right path? Are you unable to find the motivation to charge up your computer and put your fingers on the keyboard after that last rejection?Between the pages of What I Wish I'd Known: For Writers, 100 highly accomplished authors share their time, energy, and knowledge to pay it forward and inspire other writers, experienced or a...

Winner of a third-place award in the collection of prayers category from the Catholic Media Association.Every mother is looking for a spiritual lifeline—words that help bring you closer to God when you need him the most.The Ave Prayer Book for Catholic Mothers is your go-to resource to find the perfect words to lift up in prayer for almost any occasion or need. This beautiful, full-color, hardcover book includes a collection of original and traditi...

Every day I turned my camera on, sat in front of my tripod, and recorded myself doing my makeup, hair, or getting ready for an event. My supporters watched wishing they had the newest designer bag that I had just worn, or the mountains upon mountains of PR every brand sent to my front door. They wanted to be Harlym J., and I mean, I couldn’t blame them. I made this lifestyle look like a piece of cake with three cherries on top.What they didn’t see was the breakdowns, tears, and wee...

The American musical is a paradox. On stage or screen, musicals at once hold a dominant and a contested place in the worlds of entertainment, art, and scholarship. Born from a mélange of performance forms that included opera and operetta, vaudeville and burlesque, minstrelsy and jazz, musicals have always sought to amuse more than instruct, and to make money more than make political change. In spite of their unapologetic commercialism, though, musicals have achieved supreme artistry and ha...

Every company, big or small, has its own set of customs, norms, and even rules that no one talks about, yet everybody seems to adhere to. When you talk about culture in companies, it pertains to both positive and negative aspects. Business leaders understand how important it is for consultants and specialists to be able to penetrate through a company’s culture before leading them through a successful and smooth transition. This eBook, Building and Understanding Company Culture and Tran...

The brand new anthology from multi-award winning editor Jonathan Strahan, featuring stories set in futures wracked by the deluge, from some the best writers in SF, including Kim Stanley Robinson, Ken Liu, Paul McAuley, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Charlie Jane Anders, Lavie Tidhar, Jeffrey Ford, and James Morrow. We stand at the beginning of one of the greatest ecological disasters in the time of Man. The world is warming and seas are rising. We may deny it, but we can't hide when the water comes....

For the past several years, the American musical has continued to thrive by reflecting and shaping cultural values and social norms, and even commenting on politics, whether directly and on a national scale (Hamilton) or somewhat more obliquely and on a more intimate scale (Fun Home). New stage musicals, such as Come from Away and The Band's Visit, open on Broadway every season, challenging conventions of form and content, and revivals offer audiences a ...

When I envisioned the life that I wanted for myself, I pictured myself sitting in a rocking chair in the nursery me and my husband had spent months designing. I pictured looking down at a baby that resembled the both of us, and thanking God that he chose me to be their mother.My reality was that I was staring down at another negative pregnancy test and realizing the possibility that I had failed another cycle of IVF, alone.There was no husband here to comfort me, or a nurse...

Issues of identity have always been central to the American musical in all its guises. Who appears in musicals, who or what they are meant to represent, and how, over time, those representations have been understood and interpreted, provide the very basis for our engagement with the genre. In this third volume of the reissued Oxford Handbook of the American Musical, chapters focus on race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, regional vs. national identity, and the cultural and class...